


Acolyte of Asclepius

by Caedmaeg



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Magical Diseases, Parselmouths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-28 19:02:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5102135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caedmaeg/pseuds/Caedmaeg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thomas O'Donohue, sixth-year Slytherin, seems to have gotten lost on the way back to his common room.</p><p>Sixth-year Slytherins really shouldn't get lost in Hogwarts castle.</p><p>But then, perhaps he isn't as lost as he thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Acolyte of Asclepius

            Fifteen inches on the uses of dragon blood, finished.  Two feet on the history of the Patronus charm, done.  Books for research on Aethelred the Able and his pioneering work on long-term conjuring, acquired and checked out.  And last of all, Tom’s reward to himself: a volume of Belinda Cartwright’s case studies on cognitive magic.  This latest book, it would really get him somewhere.  He just knew it.    
  
            Tucking it into his bag as he strode away from the library, Tom whistled quietly to himself.  Still pondering Cartwright’s theory about wizard brains having different synapses than Muggles, he turned left at the portrait of Hildegard von Bingen, ducked behind a tapestry of some wizards laying an extremely large hedge, and made his way down a narrow hall toward a spiral staircase to the dungeons.

            At least, he _thought_ he was heading toward a spiral staircase.  But where the first few steps ought to be stretching down into darkness, there was an extremely green door.  He tugged it open, wondering if the staircase had relocated to the other side of it. 

            There was no staircase on the other side either.  He found only a second hallway identical to the one he’d just left, down to the green door at the end of it twenty feet away. 

            Which opened on a hallway with a green door at the other end.

            Tom paused in the doorway, wondering if he’d gotten caught in some kind of hallway loop and if he could ever get out, when something moved just out of the corner of his eye. 

            “Wha - who’s there?”

            He swung around whilst reaching for his wand, his voice echoing, strangely sibilant, in the hall. 

            Tom blinked.  Of all the mad things, he was talking to a _snake_.  Or at least, that’s what it looked like.  He realized, after a startled moment of examination, that it was merely a carved serpent, thrown into even sharper relief by the torch on the wall.  The flickering shadows must have made it look like the body was undulating, like the tail had flicked about.

            Or perhaps it _had_ moved.  All sorts of things moved in Hogwarts, after all.  He’d gotten used to most of them over the past six years, but Dumbledore himself had noted that the castle was still full of surprises.  That fact was the only reason he didn’t feel utterly humiliated for getting lost on his way back to the _common room_ , of all places.

            Curiosity was taking over.  How _had_ he gotten lost?  He must have taken this shortcut from the library back to the dungeons at least five hundred times before now.  There had never been a door, green or otherwise, in that wall before.  Perhaps it was a stretch of wall that had grown tired of pretending?  But that didn’t explain the looping hallways. 

            The snake moved again.  It was unmistakable, this time: the stony head nosed its way across the wall, veering around the next sconce to coil up above a heavy door.  As Tom peered up at it, perplexed, it flicked its tongue at him and _spoke_.

_Acolyte of Asclepiusss, enter if you would learn the ssssecret ritesss of Panacea._

            He had no idea what that meant, but reached out for the latch, entranced, and pushed open the door.

**Author's Note:**

> An absolute age ago, emjwriter sent me a picture of Tom Hiddleston playing Alsemaro in The Changeling. My immediate reaction was "He looks like a sixth-year Slytherin who just accidentally spoke Parseltongue for the first time." 
> 
> Things kind of grew from there. I haven't really written more than this one-shot yet, but have *planned* a lot of backstory for both Thomas and his best friend, Jack Pevensie.


End file.
